Pounds, not Euros

What really has me surprised about this headline story is that no one seemed to see it coming.

OK, I confess I didn't post anything about it, either. But back in mid-March, when Tony Blair openly accused Jacques Chirac of "poisoning" international diplomacy by promising to veto any UN resolution authorizing military action against Saddam Hussein, I read the news and commented to my wife, "they'll never give up the pound now."

Polls consistently show the majority of British citizens want to keep the pound; Blair, however, had made the adoption of the Euro one of his personal goals, and would likely have succeeded eventually. But once he realized that the Franco-German axis was fundamentally untrustworthy, it was obvious the game was up. Blair played it cool, though, and even now, he has not openly changed his stance: for the record, he has simply accepted Chancellor Gordon Brown's assessment that the UK is not ready to join the Euro zone -- but it is clear that this would not have been so passively accepted before Blair had been so thoroughly alienated by the would-be custodians of UK's monetary policy.

Posted by David on May 15, 2003 11:26 AM